Some of the daunting tasks in an organization are identification of experts for collaboration, sharing of knowledge with peers and colleagues, and ensuring the acquired knowledge is shared uniformly so it may be re-used over and over again. A common problem individuals in an organization have is finding enough ongoing or up-to-date learning to help them be effective in their jobs. The nature of work is that it is changing sufficiently fast enough that a corporate university or set of class offerings by an organization approach may not be able to provide sufficient up-to-date content to meet the needs of the organization and/or the individual.
As a result, individuals may resort to the traditional method of finding critical content and experts by simply asking people they know or using corporate knowledge systems and forums. Such approaches may be ineffective because there is no way to ensure the appropriate expert is found as one is limited to who they directly ask. These approaches may also be a waste or inefficient use of resources because a search for experts must be repeatedly performed by each individual seeking an expert. The problem exists both for the experts and the people looking for them because the ability for an individual to share widely their expertise in a way that can be consumed effectively by others does not exist with current approaches.
E-mail, phone or face-to-face communication do not provide a central place to review or store information. Rather, information is scattered in different places and at times may not be accessible by the appropriate people. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an efficient and effective way to communicate expert information.